Adding old IDE Harddrive to Dell Dimension 4700

I'm trying to figure out if I can connect my old IDE harddrive to my new Dell Dimension 4700. I was reading through the 4700 specs here:

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

and noticed that under the drives section it says the computer only supports 2 hard drives - presumably 2 SATA drives. I tried to unplug the DVD and CD drives from the IDE ribbon and plug in my harddrive to the master (jumper set to cable select), but the computer doesn't recognize the fact that the harddrive is connected.

I tried going through the setup - as my computer boots up, I hit the F2 to go into the settings.. I can see the SATA drive is set as the first drive. I turned the first PATA drive from off to on (its listed as the IDE master), but its not recognized here either. Next, I tried rebooting - during the boot sequence, an error message pops saying the computer can't find the IDE master (boot sequence is the SATA drive first). I've tried every combination of IDE plug and jumper setting without luck.

In reading the many posts, sounds like a lot of ppl are buying either an IDE to SATA converter or a card to plug in which pretty much does the same thing.

So my question is, can I actually plug an IDE drive right into the IDE ribbon and have this work? Do I have to get a converter or card?

Just another thought. The motherboard specs list the IDE port as Ultra ATA/100 - Supports legacy hard drives and optical drives. Is it possible that my old hard drives are not supported? Its a Western Digital from Jan 2002, so not that old..

After the drive is installed, check the BIOS setup, that the hard drive is set to "Auto" [Enabled] and it needs be patitioned and formatted. These are generic instructions for installing an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management, they are by Seagate, but apply to all brands.

Five years ago i did not have a 4700. Yesterday i got one with a clapped out SATA disk.

Today i have a new computer that cost me almost nothing and runs as good as almost any other computer on my network.

The thing about the internet is that for many functions even an old computer is all you need

and in many communities, old computers is all anyone can afford.

i note also that there are quite a few people making at least a moderate living out of finding old unwanted computers and refurbishing them as cheaply as they can then selling them on eBay for a reasonable price

Let me be the first to emphatically say: five years is not too late! Purely by coincidence my aunt's 4700 had a SATA disk that also just died a few days ago (Sept 2010) and so with an existing EIDE drive am looking to revive the 4700 with this. This thread was at the top of my search. Now I have to figure out how to do it properly.

Five years is just a blip in internet time but the posted solution can be of help for however many others into the future. This is spot on what I was looking for with perfect timing too.

I do have the red striped IDE ribbon and didn't change the IDE jumpers from the default "cable select" settings - another obstacle avoided. I do need to reset the jumper on the IDE drive. There is a CDROM drive on the IDE ribbon so would that mean the IDE hard drive is then set to slave? I was looking to boot from the IDE drive so I thought that the jumpers might be set to master.

Because there seemed to be a problem restarting I also reset the CMOS jumpers.

Again, thanks for helping those of use that are completely new to this. I'll come back to this later in the evening but wanted to convey my gratitude in providing additional information that google searches did not come up with on first glance.

on mine i changed the CD/DVD drive to be the slave and the IDE drive to be master - so that it would be the default boot drive - i only assume that you must do this because that's what we always did in the past - of course you can override the boot sequence in the BIOS setup

you'll have to remove the CD drive so you can easily get to the jumpers - i can't recall if it was well marked but rule of thumb is that if it is set to master it will be on an outer pin set so move it to the next set

when setting up, as you test, leave the drives outside the box - ie don't insert and screw them in until you know it all works - plug in the cables with the drives like resting on the power supply etc with the PC laying on its side

remember that the striped edge of the cable ("1") should be the edge closest to the power plug of the drive

i did not change any system board jumpers - i'd put that one back unless you are 100% sure you know what it is for